Tuesday, September 22, 2009

LOVE GONNA PACK UP

"Love Gonna Pack Up (And Walk Out On Us)" was the second single by the Persuaders, following their huge hit, "Thin Line Between Love and Hate." However, what Sly, Slick and Wicked do with it is take out the electric guitar and replace it with keyboards instead and in softening up the edge of the song, it really brings out the sublime, sweet soul qualities of the song that improve on the sound that The Persuaders' introduced. It's not a radically different song on the surface but listen to them side by side and it actually sounds like the Sly, Slick and Wicked's version would be the original and The Persuaders' is the cover. (The lower-fi quality of SSW's version doesn't hurt).

(Just to be clear too: There were two groups in 1970s named Sly, Slick and Wicked. One was from Cleveland and recorded for Paramount and People. The other (above) were from Los Angeles. Just to make things even more confusing, there was the soul group called The Lost Generation who had a decent hit in the same era with a song called "Sly, Slick and Wicked"). (Courtesy Soul Sides)

The track also bears more than a striking resemblance to the opening cut on a recent release I adore, Lee Fields' My World. The Fields/Expressions tune, "Do You Love Me," is basically a rewrite of the Persuaders cut. Not that there's anything wrong with that.